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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Catching Up on 4.0.6

Life has been smacking me around quite a bit lately. Between work, family and raiding I haven't had much time to blog and a ton of information has come out and almost past me by. Well I hope to correct that to day. There is lots of news about patch 4.0.6 that I would like to comment on. Lets get started.

Eclipse:

Total Eclipse (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%.

To be more specific the 12% damage increase from Total Eclipse is being increased to 16%, and the 1.5% increase you get from each point of Mastery is being increased to 2%. This is a decent size buff but not huge. When I hard coded this change into WrathCalcs it increased the DPS by 2.75%. Basically it's a welcome boost but it's not going to move you to the top of the DPS charts in an instant.

Some of you may be wondering how a 33% increase in Total Eclipse can result in just a 2.75% increase. There are two important things to remember. First, This has no impact on the 25% damage increase you get from being balance. It only impacts the Total Eclipse ability you train at level 80. Second, Eclipse only impacts about 50% of our rotation. As a result this increase is watered down by a very large base increase and only impacts a part of our rotation. This is how a 33% increase becomes just a 2.75% buff.

This will change the way we value stats. Currently Crit Rating and Mastery Rating are very similar in value with Crit Rating holding a slight edge. If this change goes live Mastery Rating will be clearly superior. Again, I used WrathCalcs to see how this change would impact stat valuation. Our current set up values Crit at 29% of Int with Mastery being close behind at 28% of Int. After the 4.0.6 patch Crit is still at 29% of Int, but Mastery increases to 36% of Int. Both stats are still well behind Hit Rating and Haste Rating, but will change the way we reforge and possibly slightly change some of our gear choices.

Wild Mushroom:

Fungal Growth duration has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 10. In addition, it should now be much more responsive when detonating Wild Mushrooms.

Wild Mushroom is now instant cast, down from 0.5 seconds. In addition, the radius of detonation has been increased to 6 yards, up from 3, and damage done increased by 30%.

I've already commented on WM now being instant cast and the increased radius detonation.

What's new is the change to the WM damage and Fungal Growth. In a prior build they increased WM damage by 15%. At the time I said it's nice but put the reason people don't use WM isn't because it's a weak spell. I have the same opinion now. A 30% increase in damage is even nicer, but it's probably meaningless without good mechanics. The good news is I think the increased radius of WM detonation will fix it's primary problem.

The Fungal Growth changes are very welcome. As I said in my last post I was unimpressed with the talent when I tried to use it. The primary problem I had was that it took to long to spawn and the mobs hit by the detonation were rarely snared by the slow. If they have fixed that issue I may have to give the talent another try.

I think this change took a lot of people by surprise. My guess is that this change is a classic example of why PvP sometimes means we in PvE can't have nice things. Blizzard probably made this change, because they didn't want druids as a whole to have an unlimited CC breaker for PvP. I can see how it might be overpowered. However, I will miss it for PvE.

Other Changes:

Starfall will no longer strike targets that are not in combat and will now drop stars at a slightly faster rate.

A good quality of life change. I think we all been in the situation where we pop Starfall at the wrong time and pull an extra trash pack or something. As a result, I haven't been using a Starfall for anything but boss fights where I know I won't pull adds. It won't have a big impact on our over all performance, but it does give us some peace of mind.

The only thing that makes me a little sad about this change is that I've found Starfall to be helpful with Archeology. When surveying in some of the low level areas. I can pop Starfall and clear out pretty much every mob around me. Obviously, it's not a huge need but I liked it.

Assuming this affects all types of damage, this is an awesome change for PvE and probably PvP as well. The increased armor on a moonkin was always a bit of a strange concept. As a ranged caster we shouldn't be getting meleed often and the armor was usless 99% of the time. Taking 15% less damage is a big improvement. It's not going to save you if you stand in the fire or do a lot of things stupid, but it does give you a greater margin for error and makes you less of burden on healers.

I think everyone saw this coming a mile away. Without an enchant like this, leatherworking would be clearly superior to all other professions in raiding buffs. Given how much effort Blizzard has made to equalize professions over the past few years, there was no way that a change like this wasn't going to be made. If you switched to Leatherworking just for the buff. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

Glyph of Entangling Roots redesigned. It now reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds, rather than making it instant cast.

Another example of why how PvE can't have nice things because of PvP. I'm really going to miss this. In this new era of CC, it was very nice to be able to root a target as soon as the pull happened. It made my life easier but I can see why Blizzard is getting rid of it. It's probably a bit over powered in PvP to allow a player to CC on the move. That said, they should get rid of the cooldown as well then.

16 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Just a small comment about starfall. It was mentioned it the patch notes that the rate at which stars fall will be increased. With the additional change of stars not hitting unwanted targets this should make glyph of starsurge and focus a no brainer combo imo. So far glyph of wrath was a preferred glyph by some boomkins. Any flaws in that logic?

I don't think the roots change is all that bad. Mobs tend to take a bit to react if they don't get targeted personally, i've even managed to root and sleep mobs in the same group with neither of them moving significantly, without the glyph.

The Fungal Growth change is nice. It still takes a bit to apply, but it's much faster than before and you can control a rather large area with it now. Damage is also quite nice. In solar, i easily get 10k with about 8k SP now, and it's much easier to hit things.

The moonkin change is also a big improvement, not only is it effective against magic, but it will now also effect physical damage that could not be reduced by armor, like bleeds.

@first comment: total starfall damage remains the same, same number of stars will fall, just the overall effect will be shorter duration due to the stars falling faster. Doubt this will affect choice of glyphs. If cooldown is not changed this might slightly increase total dps on long fights.

Wait so the roots glyph is still keeping the "but now has a 5s cd"? That's uh...not worth slotting, ever. At least to me. When I read that patch change I read it as "the sum total of this glyph's effects will be as follows:..." and not that they were keeping the 5s cd.

Also re: shapeshifts not getting you out of roots -- it's not totally gone, you just have to spec resto to get it as a specialization :-)

To the anonymous immediately above me, the MH-OH will still be better, just not as much as it currently is. The OH nerf will have a much greater effect for healers now and in later tiers for us if Blizzard puts in more staves than the current amount.

If I'm looking at maths correctly (and as a law guy that's a big huge "if"), does this buff place Mastery ahead of crit in current raid gear? I know it was going back and forth, and it still needs to be balanced around the fact that partial mastery does nothing, but I'm thinking more of figuring the base reforging priorities.

I have a question reguarding the recent change to the Enchant Weapon- Avalanche enchant. Would this be a viable option for Moonkins since the enchant stacks with damage modifiers like say, Solar Eclipse?